Walk away from your dog.

Hi all!

Our fourth herding time was on wednessday. Yay!

The day was sunny and nice until  our herding practice was starting. Of course it started to rain, not any small rain, pouring rain. How lovely? it was.

Ok, what can i say? Herding is HARD.  Keep walking with sheep, and same time look your dog and sheep, and always walk away from your dog.... and i can add here that pouring rain and very very slippery muddy ground. AND! I forget to add in all this the herding stick witch is keeping the dog in some sort of control (if your dog knows that it needs to move if stick is in it's way), or it should keep.. Idea in herding stick is not hitting dog with the stick. It is keeping the balance and distance between  sheep and dog. So i really need to train the respect to the stick, and teach it by not hurting dog. Stick is just on dogs way and dog needs to move, this is the basic idea of it.

This time IPA was again free, it was pretty hard and confusing for me keep up with everything what was happening in the pen.

Did i mention it's awesome to have a good breeder supporting you and your dog. Aino is at the same time our breeder and herding coach witch is really nice, because she already knows my dog and his parents and of course she knows me, when i need little "kicking" and little pushing to go out of my comfort zone. Today i totally was out of my comfort zone.

It took two rounds of kaos to get myself to focus all the things at the same time. But main thing in there was my mind, when i had calm mind things just started to work.

This calm mind is something what i need to work every day, not easy, but it gets easier and i really see the benefits of training my mind to keep calmer. I see the difference in my dogs behavior in every day life and in herding sessions. First it was just ipa running around sheep like crazy i did'n have about any control in the situation.

Then i just collected myself, every time it's easier. I hope herding is going to be kind of same for me, first it's hard and then it's getting easier.

I did learn so mutch about my dog. Last session was just blast, it was fun and ipa was working like old and allready trained dog (ok, not that good, just kidding. But nice and calm working.) We got more of those sheep to our herd so, it was easier to ipa keep working, first two rounds we had just tree sheep in our herd. And i got few chances to change ipa's direction. then ipa and i moved sheep to other pen and that was it.

In the very end ipa took big electric shock from electric fence,  i think it was bigger than normal because puppy was soaking wet and it was raining. But ipa did revet realy fast. I think ipa won't remember it anymore.

Here is short video from our training, and i know the quality of video is realy bad, so sorry about that. Hope you still enjoy it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0m3C2UQ0A


- Sari & IPA